Aloft AI (formerly Kittyhawk) is the largest LAANC provider in the U.S., powering 70% of all LAANC requests.

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

Aloft AI, formerly known as Kittyhawk, has announced today that during the month of September 2021, the Aloft UTM powered 70% of all monthly LAANC authorization requests, rendering Aloft the largest LAANC UAS Service Supplier for recreational and commercial operators alike. Through the utilization of its patented programmatic Dynamic Airspace platform, Aloft was able to seamlessly and securely scale operations in order to meet increased customer demand from commercial, recreational, law enforcement, and government users.

According to the FAA monthly report for September, there were fewer than 40,000 LAANC requests over the course of the month, which is more than a 10% decrease from the previous month. Aloft powered more than 25,000 authorization requests during the month, with a 14% month-over-month increase, and 92% of the increase coming from Part 107 operators. LAANC at night has been another prime mover for more activity from commercial operators. Since the launch of v5 of LAANC in August, Aloft has seen approximately 10% of all Part 107 LAANC authorization requests utilizing nighttime operations.

Previously, Aloft introduced Notify & Fly for B4UFLY on September 7th. By the end of the month, users generated more than 3,600 anonymous airspace notifications. The company notes that they are encouraged by this initial adoption and will strive to continue to evolve the experience based on user feedback to enable more data sharing and flight activity across Aloft’s UTM.

More generally for B4UFLY, across all three platforms of iOS, Android and web, users made roughly 2.4M searches in total during Q3 of 2021, a 55% increase over the previous year. Aloft continues to seek out ways to scale adoption of B4UFLY to encourage a wide range of drone pilots and airspace stakeholders to all come together for the sake of an overall increase in airspace safety and situational awareness efforts.

Ian attended Dominican University of California, where he received a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling and a keen interest in technology, he is now contributing to DroneLife as a staff writer